In Gesture and Speech, paleontologist Andre Leroi-Gourhan proposes the crucial pairing of the hands and the face as focal points of the emergence of the human. Correlatively, a language of gesture, a sort of embodied expression, can be distinguished from a language of speech. In Technics and Time I, Bernard Stiegler develops Leroi-Gourhan's theory to carry on a dialog with Jacques Derrida, whose conception of writing as a language of gesture can also be traced to Leroi-Gourhan. In this course, we will employ a Lacanian perspective to review the convergences and divergences gathered around the reception of Leroi-Gourhan's work. We begin with a comparison between the Lacanian account of the objet petit a and Stiegler’s elucidation of gesture as a foundational element of technics. Recent works by Mark Hansen, Carrie Noland, and others will also be included.